RV Journey of John and Terri

Wow, what a great weekend. We camped at Myakka State Park this past weekend and had a great trip. Let me start from the beginning. I took off both Friday and Monday, unfortunately Terri had to work both of those days but Joined Cinnamon and I after work on Friday )more on that later). I arrived on Friday just after noon. I found my spot, which was a little tight and close to our neighbors, but I made due. I met our neighbors, Ed and his wife Susan and Ed helped me get backed in. We chatted for a couple of minutes and then they let me get set up. After I got most everything set up I called Terri and let her know the exit and site number for when she came down after work. So with the afternoon to our selves Cinnamon and I went for a walk and then came back and we chatted with Ed a little more. Ed and Susan are from Newnan, Georgia and have been at the cap ground for about 3 weeks now. This was their 4th year of coming to Myakka and they really like this campground. We had a good convers...

A very nice weekend. Nothing special, just a relaxing weekend. Thanks dear !! We didn't do anything special really, just kinda hung out and relaxed. Friday night and Saturday was rainy, which made Saturday morning a nice morning to just stay in bed, snuggle and sleep. We haven't done that in a long time. We had our company Christmas party at noon. It wasn't to bad and it was good to see every one's other halves and their kids. I just hate having to go to those things. Oh well, it didn't kill us and we got a free meal. After the party we really didn't do much at all the rest of the day. I started the long task of scanning old photos on to the computer. I hope to be able to put all of them on a hard drive before we depart on our adventure. Between this and all the old VHS and 8mm films I want to put on a hard drive, I have my work cut out for me. Terri worked on her Christmas presents (pillows), she really does great stuff. We did take time out to...

Happy Thanksgiving !!! Yes I know, it's late. But as they say better late then never. We had a good day. We spent the day at Terri's Mom's with most of her siblings. Also, her nephew and his wife and mother in law came down from Ohio. They are now in Disney World for 5 days. Hope they are having a good time. The rest of the weekend went by way to fast. I did host a poker game at our house on Saturday. No, I didn't win this time, but it was nice to have people over and I hope that we will do it again soon. Terri and I are going camping to Myakka State Park on the 11 th . I had a couple of days vacation to use before the end of the year and this was about the only free weekend we have. Terri will have to work on Friday so I will go down by myself on Friday to set up. We are looking forward to getting out in the camper again. We haven't camp in Myakka in several years. We are looking forward to that. Well for the title, all I can say is that I can...

We had our first yard sale towards our retirement goal. We didn't do to bad either. Terri took Friday off from work so that we could have the sale on Friday and Saturday. It was a good thing that we did Friday because Saturday was about as slow as Terri has ever seen it, and she has done several over the years. She did very well on Friday though and said she never really didn't have any customers. Over all we made a little over $350.00, not to bad for stuff that we didn't want or need. We will probably use the money to help pay for Christmas so that we do not add anything to our debt. We also sold some of Mom's stuff that Dad had cleared out since Mom's death. He made $83 and every little bit helps him. We donated all the clothes that didn't sell to a local church coat closet and anything that was junk we threw away. The rest of it we packed back up for our next yard sale. My only hope is that it isn't a yard sale but a house sale. A come in and ...

Today we take a big step towards our dream. Terri is home having a huge yard sale. We had been going through the house, gathering items that we no longer want or need and know that we will not be able to take them with us. It took us a couple of weeks to get prepared and we know that we will probably have to do it again at least 1 more time. I am hoping that the next time, we can just open the house up and let people pick what ever they want and make us an offer. We actually went to an RV show on Sunday to look at some 5Th wheels just to see what's out there. Unfortunately the RV show was not a very big one and there really wasn't many 5Th wheels that would work for us or that we liked. About the only brand that peaked any interest was the Cardinal line by Forest River. But, all was not lost, cause while we were driving to and from the show we had a chance to do some planning and form a rough time line of the way we see things going. We actually had talked about selling...

So before we get to Saturday, day 2, there was a little more drama Friday night. We had just finished eating dinner when Jeff and Becky called. Seems that they had a little mishap. On their way up to spend the weekend with us they had a little accident. Seems that the kayak rack on top of their car decided it didn't want to stay attached. The wind got up under the kayaks and pulled the rack and kayaks right off the car and dropped them on I-275 doing 70 mph. As bad as that sounds, the Lord was looking over them. The kayaks stayed attached to the rack and slid to the median. There was no one hurt and no accident was caused. Then a very kind gentleman put their kayaks in his truck and took them to the next exit. So they called us because the rack was shot. Roy and I rode down to the exit and put them on his truck and we continued back to the campground. Needless to say Jeff and Becky were very lucky and thing could have been a lot worse. (Thanks to the Lord for their safety ). So day...

Happy Birthday Mat !!!! 18 and he wants to go camping for his birthday. That is just so awesome !! We spent the weekend at Silver River state park camping with our son, his girlfriend, Lynnsey and her parents Jan and Roy and a couple from our life group . What an great weekend. We arrived Thursday night and were greeted by Lynnsey's parents. Then later that evening Mat and Lynnsey joined us. Mat set his tent up because he wanted to rough it and sleep in a tent. More power to him !! Friday we went to Juniper Springs to kayak. It was an overcast day and looked like we might get a little rain. The trip started out great and the river was as beautiful as I remembered. As we got down the river a ways we did start to get some rain but it didn't seem to bother any ones spirits. I did begin to notice that the river current was much faster then I remembered and we even hit a spot where Mat started to say he heard rapids. I told him there was no rapids on this river, but ...

Only 2 more days till we get to take the trailer out again. We will be camping for Halloween. This all came about because while we were camping at Disney our youngest son called us and surprised us. Our youngest son turns 18 on the 30 th of October and when he called he asked us what we were doing for his birthday. We told him nothing in particular. He then proceeded to ask us if we could go camping for his 18 Th birthday. Now I don't know about you but for an 18 year old son to want to go camping with his parents for his 18 Th birthday says a lot about what the boy likes to do. Grant it we are going with his girlfriend and her parents. We will be camping at Silver River State Park in Ocala . This happens to be one of our favorite state parks. We will be kayaking the Juniper Springs and the Silver Springs River while we are there. We will also be joined by Jeff and Becky who are a couple that hosts our bible study. They are outdoor people and have done several bac...

Disney World, they say, is a magical place. Yes, it is unless it is in the mid 90's and there is people everywhere. We used the last of our seasonal passes on an extended weekend. It was nice to be able to camp and use our trailer at Fort Wilderness, but the time we spent in the parks was very HOT !!! The only good thing for us was that we were in no rush and we were not trying to do all the parks in X amount of days. We spent Friday at Disney's Animal Kingdom because that was the park that we had been to the least. We rode the river rapids ride and got totally soaked and we were wet most of the day from that. We did both of the shows there, Lion King and Finding Nemo . We both thought that Finding Nemo was the best show that we have seen at any of the Disney Parks. Of course we did all of the firework shows over the 4 nights we were there. Terri's favorite is Fantasmic , at Hollywood Studios and mine is the Illuminations at Epcot. Our last night we did the fir...

First, let me say hello to all that are reading our blog. Thanks for taking time to join us and we hope that you will come along as we follow our dreams and adventures to becoming fulltime RV'ers. I sit here in Fort Wilderness Campground, drinking a cup of coffee, trying to gather all my thoughts. There is so much that I want to put down in this blog but yet I don't want to go running on and on. SO, let me start with the most important item. Terri, the love of my life, had a birthday on Oct 7th. This day may not seem very important to most, but to Terri and I, it is the official beginning of our quest to become fulltimers. We have long dreamed of traveling in an RV but on Oct 7th began our countdown to our target date. We have set the date as Terri's 50th birthday, Oct 2012. There is so much to learn and do between now and that date, but we look forward to it. There is a phrase that I have always believed in and that is: It's not the destination, it is the Jo...